James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The character of Ophelia was a popular subject with 19th century painters. I’d like to ask you to vote for your favorite image in the poll at left.

In the poll, 678 people cast a vote, and the number of votes for each painting follows each artist's name.

Above: Jules Joseph Lefebvre. 74 votes
If you’re not familiar with Ophelia, she is the tragic young noblewoman in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Her story has it all: beauty, insanity, death—and flowers!

Above: Alexandre Cabanel. 8
Heartbroken by Hamlet’s apparent madness and rejection of her, she gathers wildflowers, climbs a willow, which slants over the river, and falls into the water, where she drowns.

Above: Arthur Hughes 45
She’s generally shown in 19th century paintings with mussed-up hair, a white dress, a garland of flowers, and a wild look in her eyes.

37 comments:

So hard to choose! I've always loved the Millais (especially the incredible lengths he went to - and subjected his poor model to!), but ended up voting for the Hughes - it's such a different approach to the setting and the character.

I voted for Millais as well.I saw the original painting once in a touring exhibition of the Tate Galery London and it has left me in awe since hence.(http://www.smb.museum/smb/kalender/details.php?objID=6105 )

(I would love to see the others as originals as well...especially Waterhouse...just beautiful!)

I've seen the Millais as well and this looks like an accurate reproduction of the color. Beautiful flesh tones and painstakingly rendered. It's obviously a masterpiece, and this is just personal preference, but the greens seem a little over saturated to me.

I vote for Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret's Ophelia because of the wildness and determination in her eyes and the fact that she is not particularly beautiful. There was always that question as to whether she fell off a branch by accident or threw herself into the brook on purpose over her father's decision or crush on Hamlet who clearly didn't want to marry her (but might just want a romp in bed just for fun).

Very fun Poll! I didn't know there were that many Ophelias! I bet there are even more. I love finding different versions of things.It looks like the image I've seen the most of is in the lead, I decided to go with a different one I've never seen before. They are all beautiful.

I vote for Millais. What an interesting lesson you give us here! Aside from his brilliant technique, Millais chose a moment and a character pose that tells the story far better than the others. Lefebvre, Hughes, and Waterhouse (3) present us with a pretty lady with flowers. Waterhouse (1) & (2), Dagan-Bouveret, Dicksee, and Hebert portray unhappy women with little story. Simmonds is intriguing, but the pose is not realistic, and her head is too far out of the water to support the story. The moment that Cabanel chose is peculiar. There's no splash as she enters the water; in fact Ophelia seems to be reclining on hard water. I agree that, though an imaginative concept, the pose Steck chose is pretty unrealistic. And I recall a lesson from Color and Light: Streck painted Ophelia's underwater dress too white.

It's such a hard choice, because they are all very good. I think I'm going to go with the first one just because it has been one of my favourites since I was a little kid. I love the ethereal quality that his colours evoke.

I think Millais is still the best. But I really like the second one by Waterhouse too. It doesn't tell the story of her drowning but I think it captures the feeling of beauty while death is lurking and that something's not right.

The Millais is very good, no question. One of the problems, of course, is that Ophelia is a very unclear character. Her relationship to Hamlet is a bit of a mystery that the text just doesn't solve. Did they really love each other? How far along in their relationship were they? Was she nothing more than a scorned palace groupie who ends up being much too willing to do her father's bidding? Is she carrying Hamlet's child? Shakespeare hints at all of these, but doesn't permit us to be sure. It's more as if he forces us to choose an answer and go with it.

For all these reasons, and my own sense that to make her remotely interesting you have to assume that she was the crazy one all along (as opposed to Hamlet, who only pretends to be crazy)I'm going to give a very honorable mention to the Antoine-Auguste-Ernest-Hébert, as that's the most substantive portrait, and suggests that she is harboring far more desire and madness than she would ever let on to her father or brother (a bit like the Helena Bonham Carter portrayal).

I agree with Gary that the majority of others are kind of expressionless, reflecting the artist's unwillingness or inability to fill in the blank that Shakespeare created.

Millais's work is usually the one that most people think of for Ophelia, but I've always loved Waterhouse's works. The second version's color palette is exquisite. Thanks for pulling all these versions together for comparison.